


burn a lament (lend me your fears)

by mornen



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Death Fix, Child Death, Child Soldiers, Childhood, Childhood Trauma, Complicated Relationships, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt, Fucked Up, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Underage, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Starvation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, but basically, but it's coh of course it's fucked up, not sure how to tag this, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:08:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29948385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: ‘I think I’m afraid of the cold, Beleg. I think it will kill me.’‘Not now,’ Beleg said. ‘I have you now.’Túrin nodded. But in another world, he had already died and was left frozen. Maybe in another he would die from the fire, from the fever. Maybe he had. Sometimes he thought he was dead already. He didn’t know who to tell that to. It wasn’t a good thing to think. It wasn’t sane enough.He touched Beleg’s cheek, the side of it where the light fell silver.‘Do you hate me for being scared?’‘No,’ Beleg said. ‘Of course not.’ And he said like that was a certainty, though it wasn’t. Though it would never be.*Túrin's life in Doriath and then after. Canon divergent. Beleg/Túrin eventually.
Relationships: Beleg Cúthalion/Túrin Turambar
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	burn a lament (lend me your fears)

_Come good brother, little brother,_   
_Pretty playmate of my childhood,_   
_Start now with me for the singing_   
_Sit together for the speaking,_   
_Now that we have met together,_   
_After separate pathways travelled;_   
_Seldom do we come together,_   
_Rarely do we see each other_   
_In these ragged border regions,_   
_These benighted northern marches._

* * *

_The wind would have blown the house over; it would have racked the ground bare beneath its hidden strength and shattering wail. It would have taken everything that Túrin knew, but he stood in its way._

_So the wind tore at him. Somehow he barred its path across the empty fields, brown and yellow with dirt and dying hay, though his body ached, and his eyes were closed against the wind’s fury._

_He could hear voices calling one to the other as he stood, bare feet digging into the cold mud. One voice was high and gentle; another was strong and low, almost too deep to exist; the third was calm and steady – calling the others to it with certainty above the storm._

_The last voice was thin, breaking, hopeless; he could hear it stumble over words in despair as his lips opened and closed with it, yet it was not his voice. It came from far away, from the mountains he could see rising into the ravaged sky, from a boy who shared his name and his face, but who was already dead._

_For a moment, he saw him, shrivelled and grey against the hard rocks and soft moss, his blue eyes open and glazed, his small mouth open and screaming, the tongue swollen inside, and then that child – he – was gone, and all that remained was his cry: ‘The hills are lonely, where hope is lost!’_

_Túrin opened his eyes, and the wind tore at them, trying to take them from his sockets and cast them far afield so that he would forever have to see his own dead body – the body, the eyes._

_(Those broken rocks he had fallen over as a child, when he was still that child, before the child had died without him. The moss would kill him; it was hungry for his blood.)_

_He turned from the wind in despair, still holding himself between it and his home. It was so much stronger than he had imagined when he had first stepped against it in foolish daring. Already his skin was peeling from his sore muscles and tired bones; his feet were lifting, broken, from the ground. No longer could he hold back the wind, and so he fell._

_Rising, he was swept towards his own house on the carefree, dogged wind that howled its laughter against his ears and filled his throat with dust and mud, rotten grass._

_For a moment, he saw his mother, tall and strong against the house; her hands were bleeding, the fingers torn, some almost gone. She held her hands against her stomach, where her dress rose with a child he had never seen. Her blood stained the white cloth of her apron. By her side, the doorpost was frayed and covered with blood, some already dry, some still dripping. His mother turned, pressing her face against it, and then he was against her, his wild embrace tearing her down as the earth rose to swallow her. In another instant, she was gone with only her cry for him frozen in the cold air, echoing forever in the North._

_The house was gone when he looked up again, and his father sat alone at the table in the vastness of the nothing that he had called his home. He laughed heartily against the wind that racked him, his hands clenched in wide fists against his sides. ‘You don’t understand! You don’t understand!’ he called between the laughs, looking always at the table in front of him. As he laughed, the earth shook, and at each shake he cried that. ‘You don’t understand!’ And then, Túrin fell against him with the wind, and his father was blown away into the horizon, laughing always, his cry mercilessly low in Túrin’s ears._

_In the fields, now empty, stood one last figure, and towards her Túrin was flying, faster than he could ever hope to run. His sister stood small and helpless against the dead earth. Her earlier cries for her mother had been replaced with silence, and she stood still as he came down towards her, unable to stop himself or the wind. Looking up, she saw him, and recognition filled her eyes. ‘Túrin,’ she whispered, her voice barely audible against the shrieks of the wind and the never dying voices of his parents that haunted the air, ‘why did you not come with me? Why did you not die with me?’_

_But his body drove her down before he could answer her, embrace her, and the mud leeched over her, drowning her face and her searching hands._

_And then, there was silence._

_Túrin stood. The wind stilled about him. The darkness of the mud turned to darkness of air and then a bit of light came through, red from the fire._

_Morwen sat by Lalaith’s bed in silence. Túrin watched her. Their breaths, their heartbeats, the crackle of the fire as it rose to consume, all those sounds had melded together into silence._

_Lalaith turned, stretching her hand above her golden head. Her hair was stuck to her face with sweat. She moaned, but her moan was silence._

_Carefully, Morwen dabbed at her face with the wet cloth. She smoothed it along her daughter’s forehead and against her chin. Lalaith opened her dry mouth, and her breath came out in a silent shudder. Morwen dipped her fingers into the bowl of water – warm from sitting, filled now with white bubbles as fragile as life – and pressed them against her daughter’s lips. Lalaith sucked on her fingers, licked the water off with her dry tongue. A gargle caught in her throat, and she pressed her teeth together, only a little. Her body shuddered against the rough sheets._

_Morwen set the cloth down beside the wooden bowl. She passed her hand over the girl’s forehead. She was burning. She was always burning. Her cheeks were red beside her flaxen hair, but her lips were almost white. Her eyelids were growing blue._

_Her foot kicked out with what little strength she had as if she were trying to run away from this nightmare. As if the house were on fire, and she were trying to escape the flames._

_Túrin reached out for her, but his arm would not move. He cried out, and there was no sound. He cried again, and he heard the cry, though it was weak. And then a hand touched his face, and he opened his eyes into waking._

‘Túrin,’ Beleg said. Túrin gripped at him. He couldn’t speak, so he cried. Beleg drew him close, not asking questions. He held Túrin in his arms as he wept. Túrin wept, trying to silence his sobs. Beleg stroked his hair. He wiped at his tears and whispered soft words Túrin didn’t know well.

‘You’re safe, darling,’ Beleg said. Túrin made it out slowly. He held onto Beleg’s hand. Beleg lay close to him on the little bed in the cabin far afield.

From the north a wind was blowing, and the clouds above trembled and fled before it over the night sky. Still the stars shone, brightly furious. And Beleg lay by his side.

Túrin could barely make out Beleg’s face from the darkness that surrounded them, but he could see his eyes, shining.

‘Yes,’ he whispered, closing his eyes as he answered and drawing the blankets they shared closer to his face to keep out the wind and the coming frost. He stilled his crying.

‘Winter is nigh,’ Beleg whispered. For a time, he was silent, and the strange noises of the night covered his breathing; he could have been dead, lying there, with his eyes open and his body still. Túrin shook him, desperate.

‘Beleg.’

Beleg’s hand stirred and stroked along Túrin’s back. ‘Darling.’

Túrin sniffled and wiped at his nose. The winter was coming early. Or maybe this was the normal winters of Doriath. Túrin had come last winter, and had spent the spring, the summer, there, learning. And Beleg had visited and taught him in fighting, though he was still small.

Now Beleg had taken him for a bit out into the woods to teach him hunting, to teach him to survive.

‘Do you spend winters beneath the stars, Beleg?’ Túrin watched the clouds spin over the stars.

Beleg smiled gently. ‘In the snow, beneath the stars? Not often. I have slept in the snow, but it is not often that the drifts beckon as a bed, and snow offers itself as a blanket. We have shelters, such as this, even in the farthest of our reaches. But not beyond the borders of Doriath.’ Beleg shifted closer to Túrin; the heavy blankets moved with him. ‘Do you fear the winter, Túrin?’ Beleg’s eyes were silver-brown like the trunk of a poplar tree under moonlight. He stared down at Túrin, stroking his cheek with the back of his hand.

Túrin stared out small glass panes that warped the night sky, watching the stars without answer.

‘Túrin. ‘

‘The stars are bright,’ Túrin said. ‘And they grow brighter in the winter, when the nights are cold and long. I thought they would be the last thing I saw.’

Beleg cradled Túrin closer. The fur covering them tickled Túrin’s cheek.

‘I think I’m afraid of the cold, Beleg. I think it will kill me.’

‘Not now,’ Beleg said. ‘I have you now.’

Túrin nodded. But in another world, he had already died and was left frozen. Maybe in another he would die from the fire, from the fever. Maybe he had. Sometimes he thought he was dead already. He didn’t know who to tell that to. It wasn’t a good thing to think. It wasn’t sane enough.

He touched Beleg’s cheek, the side of it where the light fell silver.

‘Do you hate me for being scared?’

‘No,’ Beleg said. ‘Of course not.’ And he said like that was a certainty, though it wasn’t. Though it would never be.


End file.
